The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Chapter 4, “The Birth of HeLa,” takes us to Gey’s laboratory, where 21-year-old Mary Kubicek works as an assistant. Mary receives Henrietta’s samples and labels them “HeLa,” after the first two letters of the patient’s first and last names. Having seen all the previous human samples die within a short space of time, Mary does not expect the cells to survive. However, while Henrietta recovers from her first radium treatment and goes home, Mary and the Geys are amazed to discover that her cells are not just surviving, but “growing with mythological intensity” (40). George Gey believes that this is the breakthrough he has been waiting for.

1951. Knowing nothing of the excitement that her cells are generating, Henrietta continues with her life. She is a beautiful, fun-loving woman, and a devoted mother whom almost everyone adored. Yet, even before illness struck, she had already experienced a tragedy; as her elder daughter, Elsie, grew older, and Henrietta had more babies to care for, Elsie’s disabilities became too much to cope with, and her mother reluctantly sent her to live at Crownsville State Hospital, formerly the Hospital for the Negro Insane.

Further traumas unravel as Henrietta undergoes radium treatment—she is devastated to discover that her treatment has caused infertility, and she also must deal with an unfaithful husband who has infected her with gonorrhea.

In 1999, Skloot comes across a collection of papers, “The HeLa Cancer Control Symposium,” and contacts the symposium’s organizer, Roland Pattillo. Only when he is sure of Skloot’s intentions does Pattillo agree to give Skloot the Lacks family’s contact details: “[Deborah] came near a stroke recently because of the agony she’s gone through regarding inquiries into her mother’s death and those cells” (51).

When Skloot first calls Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah is initially delighted that someone wants to acknowledge her mother as a person by writing a book about her. However, the second call is very different: Deborah is subdued and says she cannot talk, telling Skloot that she has to convince the male members of the family. She gives Skloot the phone numbers of her father and two of her brothers.

Back in 1951, as Henrietta continues with her radium treatment, George Gey is sending HeLa cells to scientists around the world for research. He appears on television to discuss his belief that the cure for cancer could soon be found but does not specifically mention HeLa, for the work of French surgeon Alexis Carrel over the previous few decades has turned the public against cell culture research. In 1912, Carrel claimed he had created an “immortal chicken heart” by growing chicken-heart tissue in culture. After his death, Carrel’s claims were discredited, but for some time, he was hailed as a medical hero. However, the media exaggerated the discovery, leading to a frenzy of excited claims that Carrel had found the secret to immortality. These exaggerations—combined with the fact that Carrel was a eugenicist who wanted to extend life for the “superior white race” only and later praised Hitler for his attempts to wipe out “inferior” races—had given cell culture research a bad name: “Cell culture had become less a medical miracle than something out of a scary science-fiction movie” (58).